Yankee Wife (18 page)

There was a rap at the door, and Brigham brought his feet to the floor and reached for a pen and his ledger book. “Come in,” he barked gruffly.

The hinges creaked and Joe McCauley stepped into the office, medical bag in hand.

Brigham opened his ink bottle and dipped the point of the pen, even though he hadn't the first idea what to write. The tidy pages of numbers and notes, set down by his own hand, were as indecipherable now as Egyptian characters.

“I can come back another time,” McCauley said, with a sort of cordial dignity, “if you're too busy to talk.”

Brigham gestured toward the only other chair in the room, wiped his pen, and sealed the ink bottle again. He braced his forearms on the desktop and touched the splayed fingers of both hands together. “We can talk now,” he said, and the words came out sounding hoarser than he would have liked.

McCauley drew up the other chair and sat. “Of course you know I've come here to discuss Lydia,” he said. He was a straightforward man, if a soft-spoken one, and Brigham liked him. “We both know that Lydia spoke impulsively last night at the table, when she mentioned marriage to me, but I would gladly have her for a wife.”

The deep breath Brigham drew in left his lungs in a harsh rush. “You're in love with her?”

The doctor raised one shoulder in a shrug. “I'm not certain that the sentiments I feel toward Lydia can be reduced to such a simple term. She's the only reason I'm alive today, and not just because she tended my wounds and saved me from that butcher of a surgeon who wanted to take off my arm for the bounty. There hasn't been a day, an hour, since I rode out of that Yankee camp, that I haven't thought of Lydia. Her name was the litany I said when the pain was unbearable, and when I was too discouraged and hungry to take another step. I don't think it was an accident that I happened upon her again, here in Quade's Harbor.”

Brigham reached back, massaged the taut muscles at his nape with one hand. “Why are you telling me this?” he asked, even though he knew the answer only too well. McCauley's eloquent words had left him with a feeling akin to despair.

“I am an honest man, Mr. Quade,” McCauley answered, “as I believe you are. I cannot go on living under your roof, knowing that your desire for Lydia's favor is as great as my own, without making my intentions absolutely clear. I will stay here, however, either working for you or in private practice, and if I can persuade Lydia to share my life, I will do that, too. Without hesitation.”

Suddenly Brigham was possessed of an insane urge to hurtle over the desktop and take the good doctor by the throat, but he sat back in his chair instead. “There's no need for you to leave my household,” he said evenly. “I want you close to my brother. Besides, Lydia is going to live in one of the houses on Main Street.”

McCauley looked pleased; the same expression of smugness would have earned another man a sound thrashing, but Devon needed a physician, and so did the growing community. “Very well, then,” the doctor said, rising and extending one hand. “I won't take up any more of your time. My aim in coming here was to make certain that we understand each other, and it would seem that I've accomplished that.”

Brigham pushed back his chair and rose, shaking McCauley's hand as he did so. “I'll prove a formidable adversary,” he warned, and there was no boastfulness or conceit in his words, only grim sincerity.

“I'm sure you will,” McCauley replied, his voice as warm and genteel as his handshake. “I'm sure you will.”

 

On orders from Brigham, Lydia chose a bed, bureau, and washstand from an unused guest room in the main house, along with a settee, round table, and two chairs from Aunt Persephone's sitting room. She took linens as well, and Jake generously provided her with those kitchen utensils he felt he could spare. By the time Charlotte and Millie had added contributions from their own rooms and the attic, the large wagon Brigham had sent was piled high, the load held in place by crisscrosses of rope.

Lydia walked ahead of the wagon, toward Main Street, Charlotte and Millie hurrying along on either side. A bittersweet sensation gathered under her heart like a cloud when she saw the blue saltbox that would henceforth be her home.

She would miss being in close proximity to the girls and, yes, to Brigham, and yet she had always yearned to set up housekeeping in just such a place. Here she would be mistress; within those walls she would make the decisions.

The house had a small yard, surrounded by a picket fence, and there was a fruit tree of some kind growing in the side yard. The place boasted a veranda with a roof, and beyond the front door was a good-sized parlor with a stone fireplace and plank floor. Behind it were two other rooms, a kitchen and a single bedroom with a little stove in one corner. Well away from the back doorstep stood a privy.

Charlotte explored the house with Lydia, while Millie remained outside to swing on the front gate.

“It's not very big,” Charlotte reflected.

The place seemed like a palace to Lydia, who had lived in rented rooms all her life, and after that in a military tent with her father. “It would look that way to you,” Lydia conceded, not unkindly. “After all, you're used to a mansion.”

“Is this where we'll have our lessons?” Charlotte asked, spreading her hands and turning around once in the middle of the parlor. The motion had a certain theatrical grace.

“Yes,” Lydia answered. She heard the noise of the wagon pulling up outside, with her borrowed furniture. If she just had a piano, she thought, she could be content to live right there in that cozy cottage until she was a doddering old woman. “Your studies will need to be more advanced, of course.”

Charlotte's amber eyes showed a spark of interest. “I can already read and write perfectly well,” she said. “And I'm rather good with numbers, too, for a girl. What else is there to learn?”

Lydia laughed. “Only a fool believes there is nothing left to learn,” she scolded good-naturedly. “There is
everything
to learn. What makes the flowers grow? What holds the stars in their places? What would it be like to live in Marrakesh or, for that matter, in Chicago?”

The girl looked intrigued, but suspicious. “Do you know all those things yourself, Lydia? Because if you don't, you certainly won't be able to teach them to me.”

Lydia carried her satchel over and set it down just inside the bedroom doorway, next to the wall. “I know some of them,” she replied matter-of-factly, smoothing her hair. “Others I can look up in those marvelous volumes that line the shelves of your father's study.”

Charlotte uttered a long-suffering sigh. “Papa won't let you touch his precious books,” she said, as if to dispense with the whole subject. “They're mostly about astronomy and geography and mathematics, and he says females don't have any use for such knowledge.”

“He's about to get an education himself,” Lydia muttered. It galled her to have tender feelings for the likes of Brigham Quade, but she did. How much better if she could have loved Joe instead, or Devon. Alas, there was no sense in stewing over things that couldn't be helped.

Although she didn't offer an argument, Charlotte looked skeptical. She went out to drag Millie off the gate so the teamsters could bring in the furniture.

They carried in the bed first, their grizzled, weathered faces crimson with embarrassment, their eyes averted, and set it up in the place Lydia pointed out. After that they fetched in the bureau, and a stand-up mirror, and Lydia went out to the wagon for the bundle of linens she'd purloined from the upstairs closet at the main house.

She made up the feather bed while the men brought in the table and chairs and the settee, and various items from the attic. Charlotte and Millie concentrated on getting in the way.

Finally the men finished. Lydia ferreted out the kettle Jake had loaned to her and went out into the backyard to the hand pump. In the meantime, Charlotte found a cracked teapot and put in a scoopful of fragrant orange pekoe.

The three of them were sitting at Aunt Persephone's round cherrywood table, sipping tea, when a timid knock sounded at the front door.

Lydia stood, her heart skipping over a beat, to smooth her hair and shake out her skirts. Perhaps the visitor would turn out to be Brigham, though it was a safe wager he hadn't come to pay a social call.

Opening the door, Lydia was taken aback to find a stranger on the porch. The man wore the oiled pants and flannel shirt of a lumberjack, but he'd obviously made an effort to spruce up. He'd slicked back his thinning gray-brown hair, and fresh cuts on his cheeks and chin indicated an honest attempt at shaving. In his right hand he carried a bouquet of wildflowers, grown limp from the earnestness of his grasp.

“I just wanted to bring you these here flowers,” he said, with a gapped, tobacco-stained smile. “Word done got around Quade's Harbor that you ain't the boss's woman after all, so you can expect on havin' other callers, ma'am.” He paused, touched the brim of his seedy hat “You won't meet a harder worker than Erskine Flengmeir,” he finished. Then, without another word, Erskine thrust out the flowers.

Lydia took them, offering a shaky smile. She was faced with that age-old quandary of wanting to be polite without giving false encouragement. “Thank you, Mr. Flengmeir,” she said, watching with reddened cheeks as her caller turned and made his way jauntily down the walk to the open gate.

Charlotte appeared at Lydia's side and bent forward to sniff a daisy. “I've never seen a courtship before,” she said. “I should think the next few weeks will be very interesting indeed.”

Lydia closed the door a little too energetically and stepped back. “No one is courting anyone,” she snapped.

Charlotte looked at her in surprise.

“Yes, they are,” Millie argued happily, having taken up her post at Lydia's other side. “I'll bet practically every man in Quade's Harbor will come calling.” She took the flowers and started toward the back of the house. “Do you have any vases?”

Lydia rolled her eyes. “No,” she said, somewhat pettishly. She hadn't considered the message moving out of Brigham's house would send to the other men in town.

Charlotte laughed. “I think we should go home, Millie,” she called to her sister, who was rummaging audibly in the kitchen. “Lydia needs privacy to settle in and get used to her new house.”

Millie came out of the kitchen, carrying the wildflowers in a juice glass brimming with water taken from the drinking bucket. Her small brow was furrowed with thought. “You wouldn't marry anybody, would you, Lydia? Anybody besides Papa, I mean?”

Letting out a long breath, Lydia went to the child, took the flowers from her hands, and embraced her lightly with one arm. “I have no plans to marry at all, Millicent,” she said patiently. “And I believe we've already discussed this subject once today.”

“Charlotte and I would be very, very good, if you married Papa,” Millie said in a cajoling voice that made both Charlotte and Lydia laugh out loud. The little girl feigned injury at their amusement and stomped toward the door, closely followed by her sister.

“You'll come to the big house for supper, of course?” Charlotte called from the threshold.

Lydia looked forward to being alone, but at the same time she felt a certain forlorn ache at the prospect. “Jake gave me some bread and cold meat. I think it would be best if I took my evening meal here.”

A shadow of disappointment flickered in Charlotte's eyes, but then she smiled, closed the door, and shouted some good-natured challenge to Millie. Lydia watched from the parlor window as the two girls raced down the road, leaving the front gate swinging behind them.

She went out, closed the gate latch, and returned to her quiet, underfurnished parlor. The tea things were still on the table, near the kitchen door, so she gathered them up and took them to the worktable next to the cookstove. Lydia was not used to idleness, and even bustling busywork was better than just standing there, waiting for something to happen.

At five-thirty, when Lydia was sitting down to a simple supper of cold roast chicken and bread, there was another knock at the door. When she reached the threshold, however, there was no one on the porch. A little trail of dust still hovered over the path, though, and when a curious sound at her feet made Lydia look down, she saw a tiny yellow kitten, curled up in an old woolen cap.

With a smile, Lydia crouched and gathered up her mewling caller, hat and all. She'd always wanted a home of her own, and a cat to curl up in her lap at night, when she read. Now she would have both.

G
ET OUT
.” D
EVON HAD NO MORE THAN OPENED HIS EYES
and looked up into Polly's face when he uttered the words.

Gently, Polly smoothed a lock of rumpled butterscotch hair from his forehead. Her own eyes brimmed with tears of both joy at his awakening and the poignant sorrow of his rejection. She said his name softly.

Devon tilted his head back, his bruised chin at a stubborn angle, and stared up at the ceiling. The next time he spoke, he wounded Polly almost as brutally as before. “Where is Lydia?”

She swallowed, mindful that she'd brought this sorry state of affairs on herself by trying to deceive Devon in the first place, and summoned up a watery smile. “She's moved to the blue house, on Main Street,” she answered, her voice shaky and brittle with the effort not to break down and sob on Devon's chest, begging for his forgiveness. “She and Brigham agreed it wasn't proper, their living under the same roof, with no proper chaperon in evidence.” She paused and sniffled, encouraged by the fact that Devon hadn't interrupted her chatter. “Of course, now the whole town will probably court her.”

At this, Devon's gaze swerved to Polly's face, and his expression sliced at her spirit like a knife. “I want to see her,” he said, with a coldness she would never have believed he could manage, after all the tender warmth he'd shown her before her dreadful confession. “Bring Lydia to me. Now.”

Polly rose slowly off the bed, swallowed hard. A sense of frenzied panic gathered in her stomach and rushed to the base of her windpipe, but she held on to her smile. “Lydia has come to visit you every day since the accident,” she said. “I'm certain today will be no different.”

“I want to see her now.”

She closed her eyes briefly, opened them again. “There's something I need to tell you, Devon,” she said. “You must listen.”

He looked away. “I'm not interested in anything you have to say,” he told her. “Get out.”

Polly hesitated, nearly overwhelmed by his hatred and by the magnitude of the trouble she was in. She actually considered jumping off the wharf at high tide, so great was her despair, but on some level she knew she could not take such a cowardly course.

She made her way into the hallway, her bearing as regal as she knew how to make it. Beyond the threshold, however, when the door to Devon's room had closed behind her, Polly gave a small, hopeless wail and fell against the opposite wall. Her whole body trembled with the force of her weeping, although she made no sound beyond that first moaning cry, and she raised her arms to brace herself lest she collapse.

Presently, the storm of grief began to abate. Polly had been vaguely aware that someone was standing behind her, but because she knew the person could not be Devon, she did not turn around.

Strong hands came to rest on her shoulders. “Mrs. Quade,” a masculine voice said.

Up until that moment, Polly had believed her bitter anguish to be nearly spent, but the title she could not claim clawed at her spirit, tearing it like sharp talons. She whirled, sobbing, and looked up into the sympathetic and genteelly handsome face of Dr. Joseph McCauley.

“There now, what is it?” he asked, and his tone soothed her somehow, like balm on a wound. “When I saw Mr. Quade earlier this morning, he seemed to be doing very well, so it can't be that.”

Polly brushed away her tears with the heel of one palm. “He's awake,” she said brokenly. The doctor's hands were still supporting her, and she began to feel stronger.

“Good,” Dr. McCauley said. Then he sighed, reached into his coat pocket and drew out a clean handkerchief. He offered it to Polly before going on. “Often an active man like Mr. Quade becomes—irritable when he finds himself immobilized. Also, we must remember that he is in significant pain. He'll be more tractable once he's adjusted to the reality of his situation.”

“I wish it were that simple,” Polly said distractedly, drying her face and then blowing her nose with as much delicacy as possible. She almost blurted out the new and fearsome secret she was keeping, but in the end she couldn't confide something so personal to a stranger.

The physician moved away from Polly, watching her with a kindly gaze, opened the door of Devon's room and went in.

Polly smoothed her hair and skirts, drew a deep breath, and set out resolutely for the stairs. When she reached Lydia's cottage, minutes later, she found her friend kneeling on the front porch, coaxing a distressed marmalade kitten to take milk from a saucer.

Lydia looked up when she heard the gate hinges creak and smiled. A light, lilac-scented breeze played with her spun gold hair, and her eyes were blue as the cornflowers on the Quades' best dishes. Polly wanted to dislike the other woman, on account of Devon's fascination with her, but she couldn't summon the necessary rancor.

After dipping the tip of her index finger in the milk, Lydia offered it to the kitten, who lapped hungrily at the droplet. “I was just about to walk over to the main house,” she told Polly pleasantly. “I want to borrow some books for the children's lessons. How is Devon today?”

Polly tried to smile and failed. She sat down on the top step, folding her arms around her updrawn knees. “He's awake,” she said. “He asked for you.”

Lydia came to sit beside her, holding the kitten on her lap and setting the saucer of milk on the step at her feet. She continued to feed the squirming creature with her finger. “I'll be sure to see him while I'm at the house.”

Watching the kitten, with its little ears pressed flat to its head, and its tiny, trembling limbs, Polly bit her lower lip and battled back another spate of tears.

Sensing Polly's suffering, Lydia brought her gaze swiftly to her face. The expression in Polly's violet-blue eyes was a questioning one.

“Babies are such helpless little things, aren't they?” Polly looked down at the kitten.

Lydia was still watching her when she raised her head again. “Oh, Polly,” she said softly. “Are you saying that you're—that you're expecting a child?”

Polly reached out, took the kitten and sheltered it gently against her bosom. “I think so,” she said. “My female-time was due last week, and it hasn't come. I've never been late before.”

“Have you told Devon?”

The laugh Polly uttered held no humor, only a rattle of grief. “Not yet. I'm not sure I ever will.”

Lydia's whisper revealed shock. “Why not?”

“The first words Devon said to me when he came around were, ‘Get out.' He hates me.”

“He's angry,” Lydia said, “and probably in severe pain as well. The prospect of a child might be a lifeline to him right now.”

The soft, weightless kitten had drifted off into a contented sleep against Polly's breast. “It's bad enough that Devon doesn't want me,” she said, staring off toward the snow-covered mountains in the distance. “I couldn't bear it if he turned his back on our child, too.”

Lydia took Polly's hand, squeezed it. “Suppose he doesn't?

Polly lifted the snoring ball of silken fur and gently brushed it against her cheek. At the same moment, a horrible possibility dawned on her. Devon might well think she'd already been pregnant when he met her, that the baby was just another facet of the complicated deception she'd perpetrated.

“He may not believe me,” she said, with resignation, “and I have no one to thank for that but myself.” She handed the kitten back to Lydia and drew a deep breath in an effort to compose herself. “Where are Charlotte and Millie?”

Lydia sighed. “They're with the Holmetz children, and Elly Collier's boys, gathering plant specimens for this afternoon's botany lesson.”

Polly stood, watching as a small freighter came steaming around the bend toward the harbor. Perhaps she would board that boat, sail away from Quade's Harbor, make a new life for herself and the baby somewhere else. She could always go back to San Francisco, pretending to be a widow, and find herself another man.

She said a distracted good-bye to Lydia and moved down the dirt walkway to the gate, her emotions hopelessly tangled. Even then she knew running away wasn't the solution to her problems. Besides, she couldn't take another husband, not when she loved Devon so much. Just the thought of being intimate with anyone else made her shiver with revulsion.

 

Lydia carried the kitten and its saucerful of milk back into the house, but her thoughts followed Polly along the road to the mansion on the hill. She had half a mind to go straight to Devon Quade and tell him just exactly what she thought of him and his stubborn pride.

Even before she'd put the kitten in the little bed she'd made for it, using a small pillow and an apple crate, and before she'd smoothed her hair and splashed water on her face, Lydia knew she wouldn't broach such a personal subject with Devon. He and Polly would have to work it out themselves.

As Lydia walked toward the big house, she stopped to watch the freighter tie up to the wharf. Several tall men disembarked, followed by two women in plain dresses, sharing a parasol.

Since Mr. Harrington, Brigham's clerk, was on hand to greet the new arrivals, Lydia suppressed her curiosity and went on. She would seek out the women later, and welcome them to Quade's Harbor.

Reaching Brigham's front gate, she lifted the latch and went through. Her thoughts had shifted from the scene on the wharf to Polly's predicament, and she felt a headache taking hold at her nape. It was amazing, she reflected, how very costly pride could be.

The interior of the big house was cool and quiet. Lydia proceeded through the entryway and turned toward the study, with its leather furniture, Persian rug, and tall windows looking out over the water and the mountains. The mantel was a piece of furniture in its own right, ornately carved with small animals, birds, oak leaves and acorns, stretching from the hearth to the ceiling.

Lydia marveled, touching a remarkable image of a squirrel. The creature's bushy tail alone had probably required hundreds of strokes of the carver's knife. The oak leaves were marked with perfect veins, and the acorns looked real enough to spawn seedlings.

She stood for a long time, discovering more images in the mantel. High over her head she spotted a wizard, skillfully hidden among the other carvings, as well as a magnificent stag and a gnarled tree burdened with fruit. Finally, the pull of the many books lining the floor-to-ceiling shelves behind Brigham's desk became too strong to resist.

Lydia found a stool and climbed up to begin examining the titles. She told herself she would not tarry too long, but simply find a good volume on botany, leave a note for Brigham explaining that she'd borrowed it to teach a lesson, and hurry back to her cottage.

For all Lydia's good intentions, she had a fascination with books akin to a drunk's addiction to liquor. She loved to just
look
at books, touching their bindings, reading their titles, sampling just a paragraph or two from the ones that proved purely irresistible.

She was so absorbed in one author's true account of two years spent living among gorillas in the heart of Africa that when two hands closed tightly on her thighs, she screamed and nearly dropped the precious leather-bound volume.

Brigham looked up at her with a smile in his eyes, his hands lingering on her limbs for a moment, setting fire to her flesh despite the layers of calico and muslin covering her. “Hold your temper, Yankee,” he said wryly. “That stool is none too steady, and I didn't want to take a chance on startling you.” Having said that, he released his hold on her, though he still looked ready to catch her if the need should arise.

Cheeks hot with color, Lydia replaced the gorilla saga on the shelf. The problem now was to climb down from her shaky perch without breaking her neck.

Brigham grinned, gave his head a wry shake, and placed his hands on her waist. Before she could protest, he'd lifted her off the stool. Her bosom brushed against his chest as he lowered her slowly to the floor, and the sparkle in his eyes said he'd done that on purpose.

A searing arousal swirled through Lydia's being, making her personal parts throb with memory's sweet appeasement. She stumbled back, out of his grasp, only to find herself flush against the edge of his desk.

Brigham stepped in front of her. “I didn't know trespassing numbered among your remarkable talents, Miss McQuire,” he drawled. His expression grew solemn as he looked at her hair, the pulse at the base of her throat, and then her lips. “May I ask what you're doing, plundering my study?”

A warm shiver took Lydia, and she folded her arms across her chest. “You know very well that I wasn't ‘plundering your study,'” she replied, with flustered impatience. “I merely came to borrow a text on botany.”

He nodded indulgently, his eyes dancing at her obvious discomfort. “I see. I think the mating habits of gorillas fall under another category, however.”

Lydia wouldn't have thought she could summon up another blush; it seemed to her that every drop of blood in her body had already flowed into her face. Still, her cheeks felt even hotter than before. She glanced fitfully up at the spine of the book she'd been reading, then narrowed her eyes and glared at Brigham.